carb cleaning (HMMMM)

[confish86]

Not sure if this is correct or not to do (with these carbs) , but drill bits & easy outs ???? He does have a point about some stuff BUT!!!

http://globalcxglvtwins.hostingdelivere ... ?f=19&t=32

[JBz]

ill lay ya odds with the carb dip and that extractor and those drills he will have leaking throttle shafts and a rich condition. I did some carbs a guy sent to a shop for a rebuild. They had been dipped and basically the same thing done and they couldnt figure out why it fouled plugs. I took them apart 3 times. The first time they were a bitch to synch because of the leaking throttle shafts. Got it synced and still ran rich. Took them off and reset the floats for a leaner condition . Same thing rich at idle. Finally bought 4 new keihin slow speed jets and compared them with a measuring pin and threw the old ones in the trash and reset the floats to specs. It now runs good and not rich but would run better if they hadnt been dipped. I agree Gerard YIKES.JB

[Roady]

The only thing he seems to be lacking is the use of a big F*ing hammer. Though in the one part he does use a small hammer.

Gotta give him credit for being so authoritative.

[mildhog]

Larry is highly respected on the Choppercharles site for his carb work. He's even cut a carb in half to show the ports. He's quite thorough. He's also a nut on polishing aluminum. Quality stuff.

[confish86]

Larry is highly respected on the Choppercharles site for his carb work. He's even cut a carb in half to show the ports. He's quite thorough. He's also a nut on polishing aluminum. Quality stuff.

I`m sure he is , but never seen someone using drill bits to clean jets & emulsion tubes. I`d like to get Randakks point of view on this one & maybe the guy is right & he`s figured out the exact size the bits have to be without enlarging the hole (wounder if he`s the guy that helped write the CX rebuild carb book for Randall) ??

[randakk]

Larry is highly respected on the Choppercharles site for his carb work. He's even cut a carb in half to show the ports. He's quite thorough. He's also a nut on polishing aluminum. Quality stuff.

I`m sure he is , but never seen someone using drill bits to clean jets & emulsion tubes. I`d like to get Randakks point of view on this one & maybe the guy is right & he`s figured out the exact size the bits have to be without enlarging the hole (wounder if he`s the guy that helped write the CX rebuild carb book for Randall) ??

He's not the guy who wrote the CX500 carb cleaning booklet. That would be Mike Nixon.

I won't make any other comment about the rest of your questions, except to say that putting drill bits (or any other "hard" tool) near calibrated parts is very risky.

I never recommend it as it has led to many regrets by folks who tried it...even very careful types. Jets are not only "sized" in the hole diameter sense, they are optimized for "flow." That delicate calibration is easily corrupted.

[confish86]

Larry is highly respected on the Choppercharles site for his carb work. He's even cut a carb in half to show the ports. He's quite thorough. He's also a nut on polishing aluminum. Quality stuff.

I`m sure he is , but never seen someone using drill bits to clean jets & emulsion tubes. I`d like to get Randakks point of view on this one & maybe the guy is right & he`s figured out the exact size the bits have to be without enlarging the hole (wounder if he`s the guy that helped write the CX rebuild carb book for Randall) ??

He's not the guy who wrote the CX500 carb cleaning booklet. That would be Mike Nixon.

I won't make any other comment about the rest of your questions, except to say that putting drill bits (or any other "hard" tool) near calibrated parts is very risky.

I never recommend it as it has led to many regrets by folks who tried it...even very careful types. Jets are not only "sized" in the hole diameter sense, they are optimized for "flow." That delicate calibration is easily corrupted.

Thanks for clarifying that. It just shocked me the use of drills, & you sure are the man when it comes to carbs. While i have your attention, i know by reading on the Honda SOHC site that it would be great if you started putting together a kit to rebuild there carbs. (your kits are way better then any Keyster kit could ever be)

[randakk]

...While i have your attention, i know by reading on the Honda SOHC site that it would be great if you started putting together a kit to rebuild there carbs. (your kits are way better then any Keyster kit could ever be)

No current plans for that. If there were a groundswell of interest and somone would loan me all the carb sets I would need to dissect for the R&D I might add them to the list of future products I'm working on.

[Trickster]

ill lay ya odds with the carb dip and that extractor and those drills he will have leaking throttle shafts and a rich condition. I did some carbs a guy sent to a shop for a rebuild. They had been dipped and basically the same thing done and they couldnt figure out why it fouled plugs. I took them apart 3 times. The first time they were a bitch to synch because of the leaking throttle shafts. Got it synced and still ran rich. Took them off and reset the floats for a leaner condition . Same thing rich at idle. Finally bought 4 new keihin slow speed jets and compared them with a measuring pin and threw the old ones in the trash and reset the floats to specs. It now runs good and not rich but would run better if they hadnt been dipped. I agree Gerard YIKES.JB

I realize this an old thread, but while I am new to this forum (as a new owner to a 78 GL), I am not a newbie to choppercharles.com. This is a forum where Larry is highly respected and very successful as a carb builder and writer of "his"
own book on how to rebuild carbs.

And since your "layin odds" I'm in for $20 that the technique "does" work, cause my 79 CX500 runs smoooooth...lol

Awesome to see that this forum has a CX/GL thread, these are cool vintage bikes too.

[Rat]

'Different Strokes' I guess.

Larry certainly has the reputation to make his approach hard to write off.

Gord

[confish86]

ill lay ya odds with the carb dip and that extractor and those drills he will have leaking throttle shafts and a rich condition. I did some carbs a guy sent to a shop for a rebuild. They had been dipped and basically the same thing done and they couldnt figure out why it fouled plugs. I took them apart 3 times. The first time they were a bitch to synch because of the leaking throttle shafts. Got it synced and still ran rich. Took them off and reset the floats for a leaner condition . Same thing rich at idle. Finally bought 4 new keihin slow speed jets and compared them with a measuring pin and threw the old ones in the trash and reset the floats to specs. It now runs good and not rich but would run better if they hadnt been dipped. I agree Gerard YIKES.JB

I realize this an old thread, but while I am new to this forum (as a new owner to a 78 GL), I am not a newbie to choppercharles.com. This is a forum where Larry is highly respected and very successful as a carb builder and writer of "his"
own book on how to rebuild carbs.

And since your "layin odds" I'm in for $20 that the technique "does" work, cause my 79 CX500 runs smoooooth...lol

Awesome to see that this forum has a CX/GL thread, these are cool vintage bikes too.

I`m not laying odds , but as long as i have been working on bikes , i was told to never use anything (sharp-pointy) in jets on a carb. (soft brass) Maybe by doing it his way actually fixes a lean condition that these carbs have anyway & doing it his way fixes it. I know he now has a book out & good for him but i know doing it his way sure isn`t for the novice (even with the book)

[Roady]

It took a week for me to clear out the (non-removable) idle jets. I cleaned and tin-foiled all the other jets. Got them as sparkly and shiny as I could without touching them with anything harder than the brass they're made of.

Two years later I'm still getting 40+ MPG no matter how I ride. (Even got some 50+ on some lazy, back-road tankfuls.)

Give me what Mama's high-paid engineers figured out 30 years ago.

But I do not use her "idle-drop" method to adjust the pilot screws. Puffy75's way is much better.

[philbrewer]

Its not like he is using a drill bit in the chuck. Simply using a bit guided by a hand only helps to clear these small passages. Larry does a great job on these carbs. He has rebuilt TONS of cx/gl carbs and many follow his process that is documented in his carb rebuild book.

[LRCXed]

Hi guys. I'm the Larry you guys have been discussing here. I thought I would show myself and let you have a chance to voice your questions directly if you choose to. I'm not here to start any heated argument. I'm very respectfully here to explain why I do what I do. I'm a little surprised that my method has gotten so much attention. I will have to agree with Randakk that it's not ever been an accepted OR recommended method to use anything sharp or pointed in a precision drilled orifice such as carb jets. Trust me when I tell you I too have seen many cases where someone has butchered up jets and parts inside a set of carbs. But there are people out there that should never have a tool in their hands let alone work on precision parts such as carbs. Even as easy as they are to work on. But most of us are very capable in matters of common sense decisions when it comes to working with our hands and minds.

To give you a bit of history on my method. One of the guys on the Choppercharles forum had posted that he couldn't get his low jets unplugged and the bike didn't run at low rpm's and wouldn't idle because of it. Since I had a couple broken carbs already lying around I set out to see if there was a way to get the jet out and see what makes it so special. I didn't care if I ruined it. After a few thoughts of using the Big F*%!ing hammer, yes, I own one, I decided to try an easy out. Long story short, it came out after a 1/4 turn. And at once I saw why these jets are so difficult to get cleaned out. Not only was there an emulsion tube built into it, but the controlling orifice was so small that it didn't take much to plug it up. And boy was the jet I pulled out plugged up! It even had calcium deposits on the emulsion tube side of it that plugged up some of the holes in that too. I tried to poke something through it with no luck. So I sprayed it out and got out my magnifier lens. The center of the jet was tapered down in the middle. So I got out my micro drill set and started with the smallest drill bit. Gradually the hole in the center started to show itself. So I went to the next size up and so on until I started to feel the sides of the brass dragging on the bit. That was the .018 sized bit. BTW, it was a #45 low jet. So I tried the .020 and it wouldn't go in. The key to this was to stop when I felt the edge of the hole. When the bits were too small all I could feel was smooth resistance. So I stopped at .018 when I felt a higher resistance. Then I did the emulsion side of the low jet and ended up with .031 in the same manner. Mind you this was all done by hand with one of those hand held pin drill vices. Nothing forced. So I did all the emulsion tubes with the same method.

For a couple years I had been riding a 78 CX500 that I restored all the way down to a complete re bore and rebuild of the engine. But I never felt comfortable trying to take off at a stop sign until I had plenty of room with no cars coming because it was just to sluggish off the line. So I pulled those carbs and with my new found discovery set out and did the same thing to the set that was on my bike. After assembly and balancing I went out for a ride. I could not believe how quick it was off the line. It was like a whole new bike. So I did another set that I knew ran the same way. And again success. I was so tired of the bike running lean and working through the flat spots up to the higher rpm's for so long, that I couldn't believe I was riding the same bike. This thing pulled like a train.

That was the beginning. I have since moved on with my method and have included Ultrasonic cleaning to get the inside of the passages much cleaner than I did in that original post that is linked above in the first post by Roady. Because I found that cleaning the low jets is not enough by itself. I should update that post someday to include some of the new techniques I have evolved to. The cleaning I did back then took several times with some carb sets. The sonic cleaning is way more efficient and cleans out debris that no one could see or get out by hand or sprays. Yes, that's how I did them too in the beginning just like everyone else did. That's how we were all taught. It's all we knew. And as I learned and experimented I learned more the farther I delved into them. Like the felt seals around the throttle shafts. Imagine this if you will. A bike is run for 20 or 30 years off and on until the oil leaks and road grim build up and soak into everything it touches. Along with that comes dirt that sticks to the oils. Of coarse the throttle shafts are sucking a little air past the shaft seals and the mixture of oil and dirt turns into a cake that stiffens the felt seal to the point it is no longer swelled up and doing any sealing around the shaft. Well, during the soaking and or ultrasonic cleaning with Simple green in the mix, all the dirt and oils are cleared out of the felt and washed away. Now what? Well after their blown out and dried you have a dry fluffy felt ring around the shaft again. Add some light weight oil to it and it swells up again pushing against the shaft to seal the air out. Not completely, but as good as it would have when it was new. They should have put a rubber seal in there. It would have done a better job in my opinion.

By the way. I forgot to mention above that when I put the easy out in the low jet to pull it out, the area of the jet that it presses into is not part of the fuel metering system for that jet. That's down in the middle of the jet. The reason the easy out works is because the outside of the jet has an air gap around it and it does not press directly against the aluminum of the body that it sits in. If it did, when you press in the easy out it would flare out the top and lock it into the body making it tighter. That's how you break off extractors. Like trying to remove a stuck main emulsion tube. I'll bet you have seen that more than once. The brass is too soft to hold it's shape when you try this. Anyway, the low jet has two tapered sections that hold it in place down around the emulsion tube portion of the jet. After it's cleaned out all that's needed to reinstall it is a flat nosed punch as wide as the jets body, and a few taps of a small hammer.


It's late, and I almost forgot one more point.
Years of use with these bikes or any other bike, has had countless gallons of good and bad fuel run through them as well as the occasional amount of water. These deposits build up inside the low jet as the fuel runs through it. As mentioned above, calibrated jets are just that. "calibrated to the balance of a perfectly balanced fuel delivery system" Now imagine how unbalanced the system gets over the years as the build up makes this tiny hole the controls idle and the low rpm range transition run as it gets smaller and more restricted. Even the Ultrasonic cleaner won't take off all that build up. There is not enough fluid in there for the sonic waves to get in there and break up the film and deposits that are stuck on the walls of the jet. That smaller (restricted) hole in this calibrated system is making it run leaner at it's intended and designed capacity. Even after putting a set of low jets in a sonic for hours on end with a number of different chemicals, I STILL find the restriction in the jet when I gently twist the .o18 drill through the center of it.

Anyway, I have taken up too much of your time. Thanks for having another great forum that supports the CX/GL bikes. No matter what your beliefs are, stick with it if it works for you. I myself, and countless others are very satisfied with the results of this new and unorthodox method. I have done CX, Gl, CB, and CM carbs with great results. I'm not trying to promote myself, my method or anything else. You guys have a great master of carbs right here with Randakk on board. He has lead the way for years and is the original guru with may more years under his belt than I do. I just wanted to explain what I do and why.

Larry

[Sagebrush]

Larry, welcome to the forum and I hope you stick around for awhile. Great explanation and its always good to know the logic behind a method that on the surface looks really bad.